- Part of ViennaUP 2026, the Female Founders Experience (FFX) gathers women founders, investors, operators, and ecosystem leaders for two curated days in Vienna
- The event responds to a persistent structural gap: women-only founding teams still receive around 2% of European venture capital – by building a high-trust space where deals, partnerships, and honest conversations can happen
- The 2026 programme spans capital, AI, fundraising, defence tech, critical infrastructure, hormonal health, and leadership: the subjects most events talk around, not about
- Application-only and intentionally small, FFX Vienna is designed to move past panels and performance toward concrete introductions, deals, and decisions
FFX Vienna 2026 — the Female Founders Experience — will take place on May 19–20th in Vienna as part of ViennaUP, bringing together women founders, investors, operators, and ecosystem leaders to address a question that Europe’s innovation economy still hasn’t answered: how do you build the room where the next generation of women-led companies, funds, and institutions actually gets backed?
Hosted across two intentionally small days and structured as an application-only gathering, FFX positions itself not as a conference but as infrastructure — a carefully curated space where founders raising capital, investors deploying it, and operators scaling companies can meet as peers rather than as pitch and audience.
Bridging Europe’s Funding Gap
Europe has made real progress in surfacing female talent across its startup ecosystems. Yet the capital picture tells a harder story: women-only founding teams still receive roughly 2% of European venture capital, and mixed teams with a female founder remain a small fraction of deal flow. This imbalance is not a supply problem — the companies are there, but a structural one. The rooms where warm intros happen, where LPs meet GPs, where co-investors align on a check, have historically not been built for women.
FFX Vienna focuses squarely on that gap. Rather than adding another panel to the calendar, it creates a high-trust environment designed to generate the specific kinds of exchanges — candid fundraising conversations, introductions between founders and allocators, co-investor relationships between women writing checks — that otherwise happen inside networks women have to build one careful connection at a time.
Why the Room Matters
The Female Founders team built FFX around three principles:
- the room matters,
- the topics matter,
- and the experience matters.
A women-only space changes the energy — there is more openness, more honesty, and more room for the conversations people usually don’t have out loud. Capital, power, health, ambition, and risk get discussed without translation.
As one 2025 attendee put it: ‘I loved the experience — it was inspiring, empowering, and it made me reflect. I learned a lot, and I want to continue to invest even more in supporting other women.‘
A Multi-Track Programme
The 2026 agenda spans two days and weaves together capital, technology, leadership, and personal performance. Confirmed sessions include:
- At the Table: Politics and Public Leadership
- Let’s Talk Money, Really
- Capital Efficient with AI
- Women in Critical Infrastructure and Defence Tech
- How to Run a Smart Fundraising Process
- AI-Ready Reskilling
- Hormonal Health & Performance
- Communication Failures
- Who Makes Innovation Happen?
- Mindfulbody & Personal Finance
Day 1 opens with public leadership and capital — At the Table: Politics and Public Leadership, Let’s Talk Money, Really, and Capital Efficient with AI — before widening into critical infrastructure and defence tech, an Open Mic Matchmaking session, and an evening of networking and spritzer.
Day 2 turns to execution: running a smart fundraising process, AI-ready reskilling, hormonal health and performance, communication failures, and a closing conversation on who actually makes innovation happen.
Partners & Sponsors
FFX Vienna 2026 is supported by a coalition of funds, corporates, and ecosystem organisations backing women in tech, capital, and critical industries: Fund F, HTGF (High-Tech Gründerfonds), Microsoft, zFlys, Haufe Group, EY, European Women in Defence Tech, The Social Hub, Fund Her, WSA (World Summit Awards), Treatwell.
From Signal to Decisions
A central focus of FFX is the move from signal to decision. Most events generate business cards; this one is designed to generate deals, hires, co-investments, and partnerships. The curation — each attendee is reviewed before admission — is the product. It’s what makes Open Mic Matchmaking, side-room conversations, and the evening programme function as real deal infrastructure rather than networking theatre.
For founders, this means honest dialogue with investors who are in the room to listen, not to scout from a distance. For investors, it means access to founders and co-investors who typically sit outside the usual warm-intro circuits. For operators and ecosystem leaders, it means a peer table where experience is currency.
A Cultural Perspective
FFX treats the question of women in capital, AI, and critical infrastructure as cultural as much as economic. The programming intentionally holds space for subjects — hormonal health, personal finance, communication, mindful performance — that shape how women build companies but rarely appear on a mainstage. Putting those next to defense tech, AI infrastructure, and fundraising mechanics is the point.
Shaping Europe’s Next Chapter
As part of ViennaUP, FFX contributes to a broader European conversation about who gets to build, fund, and lead the next generation of technology companies. By bringing founders, investors, operators, and ecosystem leaders together under one curated roof, the event aims to move beyond diagnosis and toward specific, repeatable outcomes – deals done, funds raised, teams hired, policies influenced.
For the women building, backing, and shaping Europe’s technology economy, FFX Vienna 2026 is designed to be the room where those things happen in the same forty-eight hours.
In a Nutshell
- Dates: May 19–20th, 2026
- Place: The Social Hub, Vienna, Austria The Social Hub Vienna part of ViennaUP
- Format: Application-only, curated, intentionally small
- Audience: Women founders, investors, operators, and ecosystem leaders
- Apply by April 29th, 2026 here
Spaces are intentionally limited. If FFX Vienna sounds like your room, apply — or forward this to a woman who belongs in it
Kostiantyn is a freelance writer from Crimea but based in Lviv. He loves writing about IT and high tech because those topics are always upbeat and he’s an inherent optimist!
